


Salt

by racketghost



Series: Strange Moons [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Hates the 14th Century (Good Omens), Historical References, Light Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 07:01:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: Stay soft, angel. I’ll be the jagged one.Dreaming alone on a stormy night. (Or, why Crowley hates the 14th century).





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place immediately after Golden Hour.
> 
> Also, pretty sure Hey Rosey was written about them.

I will love you

Like there’s razors in it

-_Hey Rosey_, The National

Spain, 1916

Crowley is a swiftly moving shadow winding through city streets, back to his small room in the middle of a warm city. Mountainous clouds are darkening overhead and the air is electric with ozone, a deep rumble echoing under the cobblestoned streets.

He is fraying at the edges, the seams of himself coming undone after an entire afternoon and most of an evening alone with Aziraphale. Aziraphale and his dandelion-puff hair and that stubborn chin and his brain full of words that cut Crowley’s defenses down to ribbons.

‘_We should get to know each other more.’ Jesus Christ, angel do you want to kill me?_

There is an incredible electric current running through him, like someone has replaced his blood with battery acid. The entire voltaic mass of him is boiling hot, running over the edges, hellfire sparking at the tips of his fingers. A flame leaps down from his thumb and extinguishes itself on the stone underfoot.

Lightning splits the sky in half, throwing it into stark white relief for the briefest moment, bright enough that his pupils narrow into tiny slits, golden irises blown wide— he couldn’t pass for human now if he wanted to. _Not like I ever could, really. They always knew I was different, could tell by all these sharp fucking edges. Not soft. Not like Aziraphale. Not like him always putting humans at ease with his soft shoulders and soft belly and warm hands— _He is reeling drunk on the mad broiling energy of himself, of being back to something akin to normalcy with the angel, of the first time being _warm again_, and having it all be so swiftly over. He needed more, wished he could hang the sun in the sky forever so they’d never have to leave, a single day eternal. It would take centuries of those lazy afternoons to make up for the millennia of desire stoked and unmet; a fire endlessly smothered but continuing to burn.

_“I just noticed that I’m getting a bit… soft, where I never was before.”_

Aziraphale’s voice has been echoing in his head since they parted on the beach.

_ Of course you’re fucking _soft_ you daft, beautiful idiot. All you do is stuff that beautiful mouth with any cheese or sweets or bread you can get your hands on. Soft. _Soft_. Don’t say it like an insult. Like soft is bad. I like you soft. And well-fed and content— none of that fucking Great Famine bullshit. Fuck the fucking fourteenth-century._

He can remember Aziraphale back then, sad and pale and face drawn with worry over the terrible weather and how it killed the crops, drowned the fields. It had rained the entire spring, every day, miracles be damned, until the wheat fields grew fetid and molded over, no bread. And the ocean water couldn’t evaporate in the salt flats and there was nothing to preserve food with and it was all just mold and decay. No future. No salt.

Aziraphale braving the threat of the Bastille for brioche makes a lot more sense, Crowley thinks, when he remembered how bread had gone culturally extinct for most of a century.

_ You can eat all the fucking bread you want, angel. Eat my half, eat my share. You put all the salt you want on your food. Now they have whole containers of it just sitting on every table. Better yet stand in a circle of it and keep yourself safe from me._

He thrusts a hand into his pants, rearranges the dull heat of himself up into his waistband, stride unbroken. There’s a resounding roll of thunder, a thick curtain of air moving up the crooked stone alleyway, the storm hovering overhead.

_Fuck rain, _he thinks, the first few drops kissing his cheek, and remembers those fields across Europe choking under relentless rainwater, _fucking fourteenth century—_ remembers Aziraphale wet and muddy and _lean_. _Angels aren’t meant to be fucking lean. Angels are meant to be full and round and _not_ wet, not muddy— _He thinks of the Ark then, the great wooden fleet lifting as the deluge sloped muddy water down mountains into the valley and children clutched their throats in a last gasp of air. _Fuck rain, fuck water, fuck mud, fuck You_, he thinks, knowing that She allowed all those children to die. _How could You? Like a rainbow would fucking fix anything, like a rainbow would ever make me forget that I _knew_ those kids, that they had names and would braid my hair and play games and make jokes. Like a rainbow could keep anyone or anything dry underneath of it—_ And then, finally, he thinks of Eden— of a great stoney wall and the first lightning storm and the sudden cloudburst where his strange angel gave him shelter, better than any rainbow— _It’s always been you, you, you, from the very start, you were supposed to protect the garden from me but instead you hid me under your wing. What a stupid angel, She was watching, has probably been watching this whole time. We have to be careful. I can’t let me stain you. Don’t get my black on your fingers. Why did you let me slip by in the first place? Weren’t you supposed to guard the apple tree from me? What were you doing instead you ridiculous angel? What could’ve been more important?_

The door to his small room opens, slams itself shut with a snap of his fingers. His feet toeing off his shoes, sand unloading from the cuffed edge of his pants, tiny mountains, hands desperate at the button of his fly.

_ Why did you let me do it? And then I slithered up the wall and fully expected you to smite me— why didn’t you smite me? You saw I was the snake—_

His pants are ever so slightly damp and stick to him, all salt-air and sand smudged between his skin and denim. It’s like shedding his skin, the slow-peeling stick of it. The air in this room has its own atmosphere, has its own humidity, and it suctions to Crowley’s skin like a jealous lover, suffocating and damp.

_—but you didn’t even _care_, you barely looked twice at me. Like you barely looked at my eyes when I took off my glasses, like you think that they’re _magical_ instead. What kind of angel says something like that to a fucking demon? What kind of angel doesn’t blink when a snake slithers up next to them? I was trying to scare you with the skin-walking bit and I’m not even sure you noticed—_

He strips, leaving pieces of himself everywhere, hands snapping the windows shut until it is dark in his room and he leans into the earthen wall, legs spread wide, the whole leaking heat of himself pressing into his belly.

—_or at the very least you could’ve found it impressive but you didn’t even say anything, just let me shapeshift in front of you like _that’s_ an every day occurrence—_

Head tilted back, hips bracing against the wall, he takes himself in both hands.

—_Like you’re used to seeing snakes become men—_

And then words leave him, replaced with an endless parade of Aziraphale across centuries— moving, soundless pictures of the angel swathed in white breezy cotton and every moment that they ever touched broadcasts across his body. The brush of Aziraphale’s wing on his shoulder in Eden, the sweep of a thumb on his cheek in Rome, wiping away lemon juice, huddled beside a brazier in Wessex, shoulders touching, Aziraphale unbuttoning his coat just two months ago and holding his arm stiff between both palms— he can feel the touches as if they are happening now, imprints of a ghost, a phantom limb.

His hand is quick, practiced, how long has it been since he last did this? A day? An hour? _How did you not feel the lust rolling off of me in sheets? How did you just sit there and talk to me like your words don’t ruin me? Like I can do anything but fuck my own hand when you aren’t around._

His glasses are slipping down his nose, sweat beading on his neck, pooling in his clavicle.

_You’re going to fucking kill me, angel, this is it for me, I can’t contain this, it’s too big, too much. This body isn’t meant to hold this much want. It’s been centuries, centuries—_

And then his hand slows, tightens, imagines Aziraphale spread on an endless white expanse of bedsheet, _I could go slow for you— _and he wonders what it would sound like to make that mouth say his name, _if that’s what you want, as slow as you need_, _anything you want I’ll give you. You want the stars? I’ll pull them down from heaven for you._

If his hand quickens it isn’t on purpose, thinking of what Aziraphale must look like now under all those waistcoats, bow ties, jackets. 

_Soft_, his mind supplies, _soft and round and full and sweet and I want to lick every warm inch of you, crawl up inside you until I disappear like one of your stupid magic tricks, maybe you will white wash me, make me clean again, swaddle me in heat, baptize me new—_

Aziraphale today, on the beach, those pale ankles dipped in seawater. Aziraphale in France, running a blunt finger through plated whipped cream. Aziraphale in America, sitting beside a campfire. Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale. _Angel, angel, angel._

He comes with a soft broken sound, spilling over his hands onto his stomach. A liquid pillar of salt. The color of it is always a shock, even in this darkened room, that any part of him could be so white.

His back aches where he was pressing into the wall, at the junction of where his wings would be. He can feel them, the great ruffling of a thousand raven-feathers as they settle in the firmament, a tightly coiled spring relaxing at last.

Crowley closes his eyes, breathes in shaky breaths.

_I hope You saw that. I hope You watch me every time, _he thinks, feeling the feral energy bleed out of him, drip down onto the floor between his spread legs, and then from his subconscious: _You made a good one with him._

The thought shocks him, even as he palms the quieting sex of himself and sags deeper into the wall. _The best one, actually, _he amends_. _Aziraphale miracling food for orphans. Aziraphale sneaking children into The Globe. Aziraphale healing lepers.

And straight from the reptilian animal in him comes imagined pictures— Aziraphale pale and muddy, Aziraphale burning in sulphur, Aziraphale dyed black.

He straightens, swaying where he stands, the images seared behind his eyelids. And then he snaps his fingers and dissolves the mess of himself into sharp spotlessness. Black and crisp. Thunder moans in the distance, the windows of his room quivering.

_You better not ever touch him, mar him, make him like me, _he thinks, pulling on his jacket._ Or so help me I will find a way to You and I will rip the holy power from Your hands. I’ll make it rain for centuries. I’ll make _You_ drown in muddy water. And then I’ll string a rainbow over _Your_ head. See how that does for an apology._

The night feels like a living thing as he exits his room, like an animal with its hackles raised. The street vibrates with a strange dangerous energy, every hair on his arm raised in alert. _Threatening the Almighty will do that,_ he muses, drunk on power and recklessness, eyes glowing in the dark, devil-may-care. He strides down the alleyways, hellborn hair flaming incandescent under the streetlights, lips thirsting for wine, a renegade firework ready to ignite.

_ I’m not afraid. I’ve been protecting him for 6,000 years and I’m not about to let anything happen to him. Not even You._

The cobblestones glow underfoot with wet reflected light as he heads toward a late-night bodega, lightning flickering in the distance. He thinks of the future, of the hopefully far off war between heaven and hell, of his angel with his flaming sword. _Stay soft, angel. I’ll be the jagged one._

He steps into the town square, into the beating heart of a city at midnight, more awake than he has been in ages. He has temptations to perform, and he is suddenly starving for bread.

**Author's Note:**

> This whole story arc probably should've been a chaptered story. I didn't realize it was going to run away like this. Apologies!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Salt [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20697584) by [JuliaJekyll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuliaJekyll/pseuds/JuliaJekyll)


End file.
